Recorded
May 17, 29, and June 5, 1962 at Sound Makers Studio in New
York City

Produced by Orrin Keepnews

by
John Vallero

For
devout followers of pianist Bill Evans, the date June 25th
has become
something of a Holy Day. It was of course on that day in
1961 that an
Evans- led trio, featuring Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul
Motian on drums,
concluded a two- week engagement at New York’s Village
Vanguard by
recording the entire day’s output. The initial hope
was that a live
record could be milked from the notoriously particular Evans,
who, in an
era when prominent jazzmen were releasing as many as five
and six LPs a
year, had recorded a total of four albums as a leader since
1956. But
there were far better reasons for assembling the mobile
two- track that
Sunday afternoon.

From its inception in the fall of 1959, it had been almost
immediately
perceptible to those paying attention that this was not
your ordinary jazz
piano trio. Two stellar records, Portrait in Jazz and Explorations,
had
charted the development of something unique brewing between
these three
musicians. Rather than providing a blanket for individual
meandering, the
delicate interplay shared by this triumvirate began to take
on a feeling
of collective, simultaneous improvisation, with the soloist
barely
discernible from the accompanist. The hours spent coaxing
their
instruments and minds into arriving at the same destination
had begun to
bear fruit, and it was in that Greenwich Village basement
that it now
seemed as if anything and everything was possible for this
group.
Together they had reached a new level of creative unity
and artistic
beauty that few, if any, improvising bands could hope to
match, and it was
still only the beginning. Ten days later, however, Scott
LaFaro was
killed in a car accident, and what had seemed so attainable
on that Sunday
in June was now gone forever.

The
news of the bassist’s death devastated Evans on both
a personal and professional level, to the point where he
avoided playing the piano, even
in private settings, for several months. Musically, picking
up where he had left off, sans the spark that had driven
him, was a daunting task.

The trio had been propelled by Evans’ romantic lyricism
and divine touch just as much as it had been by LaFaro’s
rich sustain and explosive fills.

Finding a replacement on the same wavelength was simply
not doable. When
Bill and Paul Motian reconvened some six months later for
a series of club
dates, a young man named Chuck Israels was in the bass seat.
In Israels,
the band had not necessarily found someone to pick up where
LaFaro had
left off, as much as a new, individual voice- one that was
sympathetic to
the intimacy and balance that Evans was striving for.

By springtime of the following year, the group had coalesced
to the point
where it felt comfortable to make a record. Evans’
mastery of the ballad
form was already well established, yet he had never attempted
anything
close to an all- ballads program in the studio. Following
producer Orrin
Keepnews’ suggestion that a second, more bop- oriented
record be recorded
simultaneously to avoid any languidness, the “second
trio” produced two
records over three studio dates, the up- tempo How My Heart
Sings and
Moonbeams. The latter remains among the most personal and
important works
in the entire Bill Evans catalog.

Evans’ lush, urban romanticism had become a defining
quality of his work,
dating back to his time spent with Miles Davis. When Bill
played, it was
as if the piano was truly singing. Under his pliant touch,
melodies took
on a life of their own, soaring upwards, with exquisitely
chosen notes
rising and holding for just the right amount of time before
falling
earthward like burning stars. Indeed, nobody before or since
has handled
a ballad like Mr. Evans, and every second of Moonbeams showcases
this
extraordinary talent.

The soft, droning left- hand chords of the Evans original,
“Re: Person I
Knew” (a quirky anagram of the name Orrin Keepnews)
establish the pensive,
late- night mood that comes to permeate the entire album.
Beginning with
a loose, unaccompanied piano statement (on an out- of- tune,
somewhat
“dead” sounding instrument which is present
throughout the entire record)
before sliding into a limber, smoothly swirling structure,
this tune
proved to be the ideal vehicle for drawing in both performers
and
listeners, surely a reason why it would become one of Evan’s
most oft-
requested compositions throughout the next two decades.
On this cut,
LaFaro’s absence is instantly noticeable. Though the
group interacts
well, there is little question of who is in charge. It is
Evans, playing
with a muscular rhythmic quality unlike anything he had
done before, that
carries the performance through each phase.

Though he had always been the driving creative force behind
the bands
bearing his name, it wasn’t until Moonbeams that Bill
Evans sounded like a
full- fledged leader. On earlier trio LPs, LaFaro’s
roaring presence had
often been so significant that Evans’ piano became
more of an
impressionistic collage, rather than a leading voice. But
comparisons
between the two groups are inane and unnecessary. What cannot
be denied,
however, is that the piano was the unquestionable limelight
of this new
trio. With Israel’s more reserved and spacious style,
along with Motian’s
ever-sensitive rain- like brushwork, Evans was able to inject
a sense of
firmness into his ballad playing, while still retaining
his signature
tenderness. In the LPs original liner notes, Joe Goldberg,
commenting on
the achievement of this difficult balance, described Evans’
playing as
having “the delicate strength of silk thread.”

While the rhythm section maintains a slow, luscious throbbing,
that “silk
thread” pushes the album along through its dream-
like state. As the trio
makes its way through a suite of gorgeous re- workings of
standard tunes,
it becomes less and less apparent that a jazz group is actually
responsible for this feeling of serenity. Indeed, if one
closes their
eyes it seems as if they have been overtaken by a swell
of foamy pink
clouds that float lazily through the sky. Very rarely does
Evans pierce
through this effect by reaching for the keyboard’s
utmost registers. On
this record, the majority of his playing is done with full,
intricately
locked hands around middle C. When his lead line does extend
upward, it
is only in brief, rippling movements, as on the sparkling
melodic tweaking
he applies to “It Might As Well Be Spring.”
It was through this unique
application of slower tempos and long, contemplative solos
on jazz and
popular song forms that the trio was able to, in some sense,
surpass the
realm of a jazz group, and enter into the world of improvised
chamber
music.

Following the six covers, the record concludes with “Very
Early,” another
gem from the pen of Evans. Written as a college assignment
when the
pianist was not yet twenty years old, this moderate ¾
waltz showcases the
often-overlooked compositional brilliance of Bill. Like
practically every
other piece of music that he conceived, “Very Early”
was smart, logical,
scientific, and intensely rich, both melodically and harmonically.
Though
he had waited close to fifteen years for the piece to make
its recording
debut, Evans would return to the tune often throughout the
remainder of
his career, but usually at far more rapid pace that never
would have
worked in the context of Moonbeams.

For the better part of a century, the legacies of musicians
have been
preserved through the recordings that they made. With more
than four
decades of hindsight, it seems almost as if a record such
as Moonbeams was
made specifically to define the dynamic artistic legacy
of Bill Evans for
later generations. Despite his tremendous faculty and comfort
with
blistering tempos, Evans’ reputation will forever
be tied to his
unparalleled mastery of the ballad, a talent on full display
throughout
this recording. Today we can view this record as a documentation
of the
very essence of its main creator. It is intense, intelligent,
romantic,
beautiful, and tragic all at once. But in 1962 it was just
a step in the
right direction for a group trying to discover its own voice.
It is a
unique and noteworthy achievement in either sense.